Too many drives fizzle in Unity territory in Hawks’ 28-6 loss

Both teams ran the football effectively, but the Unity Eagles did a better job of finishing off drives Friday night and earned a 28-6 homecoming win over the Rib Lake-Prentice Hawks.

Unity piled up 336 rushing yards and got two short scoring runs from Brody Allen, who finished with 166 yards on 23 attempts for the Eagles, who remained unbeaten in the four games they have played.

The Hawks got a big game from senior running back Sam Gumz, who ran for 140 yards on 24 carries and a touchdown, but they remained winless in the five games they have played. Officially, however, the Hawks are 2-2 in the Lakeland Conference and very much in the WIAA playoff hunt with three games remaining.

“We only had three or four negative run plays and everything else was a positive play,” Hawks’ co-head coach Jonah Campbell said of his team’s offensive effort that produced 190 total yards, including 172 on the ground. “We got the ground game kind of working and pretty much figured it out during this game. It was just a matter of all the pieces around it were not cooperating when we needed them to.”

Missed opportunities haunted the Hawks on the long ride home. The Hawks had the ball in Eagles’ territory seven times and only came away with one touchdown.

Arguably the biggest play in the game came late in the second quarter when Rib Lake-Prentice fumbled the ball away on a toss play when it was on the verge of potentially tying the game at 14-14. Instead, Unity kept a 14-6 halftime lead and doubled its point total with two secondhalf touchdowns.

While Unity’s ground game was never really stopped, Rib Lake-Prentice gave itself a chance defensively by forcing four turnovers with two interceptions and two fumble recoveries by Jordan Yanko.

“We won the turnover battle,” Campbell said. “We just weren’t able to turn the turnovers into points.”

Unity set the tone by scoring on its first two possessions. The Eagles got a 30yard run from fullback Jacob Erickson on its second play from scrimmage and quickly turned that into six points on Allen’s 2-yard touchdown run just 2:51 in.

A promising first drive for the Hawks stalled after a holding penalty and a missed connection between quarterback Michael Borchardt and receiver Michael Quednow on an open fourth-down post pattern.

Yanko recovered a fumbled snap by Unity quarterback LJ Manning to end an Eagles drive at the 25, but the Hawks were quickly forced to punt and Unity went 60 yards in eight plays, scoring on Connor Eichelt’s 5-yard run with 9:00 left in the first half. Eichelt’s two-point run made it 14-0.

But the Hawks responded with their best drive of the night, going 63 yards in six plays and scoring when Gumz burst through a hole on the left edge and won a race to the pylon from 23 yards out. The two-point pass was knocked out of Quednow’s hands, keeping it 14-6 with 5:24 left in the half.

Quednow’s interception four snaps later gave the Hawks a chance to tack on another score before the half. Starting at their 41, the Hawks got a 14-yard run from Gumz, a 4-yard gain from Dominick Classen and a 17-yard burst up the middle for Borchardt to reach Unity’s 24. On second and 10, after a timeout, the Hawks went with a toss play to the left, but the timing was off and Borchardt’s pitch hit Yanko on its way to Gumz. Unity’s Isaiah Holden recovered at the 30.

“That was just unfortunate,” Campbell said. “We haven’t done that in practice or in a game on that play where we hit the fullback. It was just a matter of that hitting at that time when we’re on the 25 and we lose the ball. We had the momentum going there. We felt like we could score there, go into half possibly tied. Just an unfortunate series.”

A fourth-down sack ended Rib Lake-Prentice’s first drive of the third quarter after it reached Unity’s 40. The Eagles needed just seven plays to cover 53 yards and regain their two-score lead. Allen got the touchdown on a 2-yard run and Mike Nelson’s two-point run opened up a 22-6 lead with 6:43 left in the quarter.

Allen basically slammed the door on the Hawks by picking off a Borchardt pass intended for Trey Klemann at the front left pylon of the end zone with 17 seconds left in the quarter, ending a Hawks’ drive that had reached Unity’s 26-yard line.

Yanko gave the Hawks a glimmer of hope by recovering an Allen fumble at Unity’s 40 with 10:25 to go, but a stripsack by Unity was recovered by Erickson and returned 12 yards to the Hawks’ 32. Nelson capped that drive with a 5-yard touchdown run with 6:02 left.

“A big thing was we were running our main play consistently,” Campbell said. “I think we ran it for positive yards all but one time. One time we got stuffed, but other than that it was always positive. Sammy had 20 of his 24 carries on pretty much the same play. It was just that play left and right and we had a few tosses mixed in. He averaged just about 6 yards a carry and most of those were off the iso dive. We were more consistent up front, which was good.”

Defensively, the Hawks didn’t feel this was their strongest outing as the Hawks were unable to create enough disruption at the line of scrimmage and got Unity behind the chains.

“With counter action like they showed, we just haven’t been able to close down on the pullers and be able to wreck the pulls, so we end up catching blocks and they get better angles on us or kick our edge guys out to give themselves a hole,” Campbell said. “We’ve talked about our linebackers getting caught in the wash. They’re making the right read, but sometimes they got caught in somebody else’s block so they have to move around piles instead of trigger through the hole.”

Yanko led Rib Lake-Prentice with 12 total tackles, including six solos, and Gumz had 10 and a late second-quarter interception. Klemann was involved in seven tackles with three solo stops.

Those kinds of things certainly are a focus this week as Rib Lake-Prentice prepares to face arguably the best rushing attack they’ll see this regular season when undefeated Hurley visits Prentice Friday night for homecoming.

Jordan Yanko